By: Apurva Bhatt

 

There’s some bad news for residents of island city who consume power from BEST. The power firm has suggested that it will hike its power tariff to a maximum of 16% for its 10.5 lakh consumers from the city. The proposed tariff includes the "cross-subsidy" surcharge for bus losses. This has lead to many citizens now choosing Tata Power as it’s the cheapest of the three (BEST, MERC and Reliance).

Remarks Bhavesh Vora a resident of Matunga, “The moment Tata power announced its rates I changed from BEST to Tata Power as it’s the cheapest. I was expecting that BEST will increase its power tariff.” There are  also news of high-end residential and commercial users keen on switching to Tata Power in the island city. Many hotels, corporates and major malls were in the process of applying to Tata Power for a total consumption of 45 MW (a significant load). If these high-end consumers migrate from BEST, it will affect the cross-subsidy for low-end residential consumers in the island city. This means a greater hike in power tariff for residential users. 

Right now , BEST has the highest tariffs for residential consumers in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. For the year  2015-16, BEST has proposed a hike in tariff by Re 1 per unit for those with 101-300 units of consumption. The hike for high-end residential users—which is the 301-500 unit category—is likely to be from the present Rs 8.94 per unit to Rs 10.24 per unit.